Upward bound Heslin snags ProJo new media post; also, the talk on Laffey BY IAN DONNIS

TWO SIGNIFICANT CHANGE in the newsroom hierarchy of the Providence Journal have shaken the relative tranquility that has prevailed at the newspaper since the end of a prolonged union-management battle in December 2003.

According to a March 1 memo from executive editor Joel Rawson, metropolitan managing editor Tom Heslin is taking on a new post as managing editor for new media. Heslin, who oversaw the team of reporters that won the 1994 Pulitzer for investigative reporting, "will be managing the news department’s Internet operation and convergence efforts," Rawson wrote. "Tom will be responsible for Projo.com’s news content, news convergence activities with our media partners and staff development for new media. Tom will continue to oversee the I-team, which will report to him" City editor Sue Areson will move into the metro managing editor’s job.

Staffers responded to Rawson’s announcement by trying to ponder the implications for Heslin, who, like Rawson, is considered one of the big journalistic brains at the newspaper. The general thinking is that he is being groomed as a successor to Rawson, who is expected to retire when he turns 65 in five years. Heslin declined to comment when contacted by the Phoenix.

One question is whether Heslin is being given a mission with critical implications for the journalism industry: whether newspapers can be made more relevant for young people, who don’t have the newspaper-buying habit of their elders. John Hill, president of the Providence Newspaper Guild, says, "From what they’ve told us, he’ll be in charge of finding new ways of interconnecting [the ProJo’s Web site] with the newsgathering operation." The seriousness of bolstering circulation can be seen by how the Journal staged an employee sales contest in December, offering cash prizes of $300, $400, and $500 for the workers selling the most discounted subscriptions in several categories.

In the first meaningful shift in recent years, the ProJo is also reassigning a series of reporters. Most of the changes involve the metro staff, which works from the main Providence office while generally reporting for the paper’s zoned metro section.

Providence police-fire reporter Amanda Milkovits is moving to a statewide law enforcement beat. City Hall scribe Greg Smith moves to Providence cops, while Cathleen F. Crowley supplants Smith. Providence schools reporter Gina Macris is said to be bound for East Providence. In the move causing the most upset, Linda Borg, who had a broader lower education beat, is getting assigned to Providence schools, while the statewide higher education and lower education beats are being consolidated for coverage by one person, Jennifer Jordan.

The Laffey show

TO THE SURPRISE of almost no one, Cranston Mayor Laffey’s new Friday-morning talk-show on WPRO-AM has attracted a boatload of attention. The media-savvy mayor, a rising GOP star who remains demure about his campaign plans for 2006, was prominently displayed on the front of the February 26 Journal, and a series of complaints about his radio show had him offering sound bites once again at the top of WJAR’s (Channel 10) 11 p.m. newscast on March 1.

David Bernstein, director of news and operations for WPRO, turns to Laffey in rejecting assertions that the radio station is offering one incumbent among many a distinct advantage. "The reason that Mayor Laffey was approached by WPRO was because of his compelling talents as a talk-show host," Bernstein says. "It’s not politically motivated at all." (Disclosure: I am an unpaid, weekly guest on WPRO’s Dan Yorke Show.)

Laffey, who is not being paid for his broadcasts, posits the issue as a matter of free speech. In a sign of his ability to remain steadily on-message, he called back after we talked for a few minutes to pipe this quote to my voice mail: "Special interests’ attempts to stifle free speech will ultimately fail. It may work in Cuba, it might have worked in the old Soviet Union, it’s not going to work in America." A nice sentiment, perhaps, but one that seems off-base considering how the radio show offers Laffey a jump on the paid advertising that local candidates will be copiously buying next year.

Likening the situation to how New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia once read comics over the radio, Maureen Moakley, chairwoman of the political science department at the University of Rhode Island, finds no foul. "He’s perfectly well within his rights and a long tradition of sort of charismatic pols taking advantage of their popularity to promote their visibility and interest." Similarly, Brown University political science professor Darrell West says Laffey is "the perfect radio host in the sense that he’s smart and controversial." The Fairness Doctrine, which prescribed equal time for competing viewpoints, he adds, was done away with during the Reagan years, and an advantage naturally accrues to media-savvy types.

Aram Garabedian, president of the Cranston City Council, and Bill Lynch, chairman of the Rhode Island Democratic Party are less sanguine. They have filed complaints about Laffey’s radio show, respectively, with the state Board of Elections and the state Ethics Commission. Although he questions whether Lynch’s complaint will be successful, H. Philip West Jr., the executive director of Common Cause of Rhode Island, takes up a related theme: "It gives him [Laffey] a free platform that none of the other candidates have, and I find that troubling."

Ian Donnis can be reached at idonnis@ phx.com.